Warming up to Cult of Undeath and even beyond

I’m reluctant to make changes to my setting based on what I can convince the AI to illustrate, but I’ve already accommodated one, and I’m considering another. First, I decided that the kemlings don’t have obligatory small Darth Maul or Graz’zt like crown of horns around their head. I had already been irritated by my inability to find surrogate illustrations even before generative AI images were a thing. I’m even more disinclined to make that obligatory now that I can’t get DALL-E 3 to generate images that have them, unless I want them to look specifically like Star Wars characters. AI isn’t really all that. But on the other hand, I do kind of like that particular feature being merely one of many potential old-school (prior to 4e) tiefling features, and most kemlings wouldn’t even sport any of them at all. The second thing that in spite of many attempts I have not been able to get a good image of is the skull-face moon that shines over Grozavest. This isn’t really all that exciting anymore as a feature, since Golarion has a moon like that too, at least in one of the outer planes or something. Plus, moons that look like skulls is an old fashioned and time honored tradition in cover art for murder mystery novels going back decades. What if the moon showing a skull aspect was not the normal state, but instead an omen that’s known to take place from time to time? I could actually make it more interesting when it happens if so. Or, even not make that unique to Grozavest, but rather something that happens across the entire world. Either way, it’s not exactly an impending problem; there’s not going to be any travel to Grozavest in Shadows Over Garenport or Cult of Undeath either one; although the unnamed proposed campaign that would take place between Cult of Undeath and Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes, and would focus on traditional vampire Timischburg stuff almost certainly will take the PCs to Grozavest, and might even have at least an entire front that doesn’t even leave the city completely. (I don’t know yet what other fronts I’ll have. Probably one in Innsborough, my sea-side version of Innsmouth, and one in Inganok and Castle Dracul… and I’d like to have a werewolf themed one. One that’s less supernatural? Maybe something to do with boats coming from Nizrekh. Oo, oo… I can foreshadow the mind-wizards!)

So, there’s an ad hoc quick draft of what themes I want to cover in a third campaign season. Before I start that, I still have to redo Cult of Undeath away from my old Carrion Crown adaptation, how it started. Instead, it will become something that’s evolved in a completely different direction that only has the initial framing device as common from that adventure path; barely enough to qualify as an influence at all.

I doubt that we’ll be done unpacking for weeks, and I’m afraid that my hobby stuff will be among the last stuff that gets found, because our movers mislabeled lots of boxes, and the ones where I suspect that my hobby stuff is (and by “hobby stuff” I mean even stuff as basic as my computer) are buried under all kinds of things in the garage. So, I’ll probably still be dilly-dallying with blog posts that tread water, but once I really get back into my groove, I’ve got a couple of new maps to draw; my “alternate version” of the entire Three Realms setting, a revised take on my old hexographer Nizrekh map (especially if Nizrekh ends up being part of the third season) and even a first draft of a map of Hyperborea.

Also, since Shadows Over Garenport is and has been done (with the exception of playing it) for some time, it’s time to buckle down and get Cult of Undeath actually moving too.

Grozavest

Mind-wizard

Timischburg vampire